In a historic milestone for blockchain scalability, Ethereum Layer 2 networks are now collectively processing more daily transactions than the Ethereum mainnet itself. Combined L2 throughput exceeded 15 million transactions per day in April 2026.
Arbitrum leads the pack with 5.2 million daily transactions, followed by Optimism at 3.8 million and Base at 3.1 million. The surge is largely attributed to growing DeFi activity and the increasing popularity of on-chain gaming applications.
Transaction fees on L2s remain a fraction of mainnet costs, with most transfers costing less than $0.01 following Ethereum's Dencun upgrade. This has made blockchain technology accessible to a much broader user base.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called the milestone "exactly what we planned for" in a social media post, noting that the rollup-centric roadmap is delivering on its promise of scalability without sacrificing decentralization.
The shift has implications for ETH tokenomics as well, with mainnet gas fees declining and the burn rate decreasing. However, L2 settlement on mainnet continues to provide baseline demand for block space.
